Oakeshott, Windsor biomass burner scheme Pythonesque

Substituting native forest biomass for another renewable generation source is particularly problematic because of the nature of the technology, writes Andrew Macintosh, associate director of the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy.

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Imagine a climate policy plan that was incapable of lowering emissions but could increase them, that resulted in no net gain in the amount of renewable electricity generation, and that cost Australian taxpayers millions each year. While this might sound like it is from a Monty Python skit, it is the effect of a plan put forward last week by independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, which will allow biomass burners using native forest wood waste to generate Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) under the Large-Scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) scheme.

The standard justification for this idea is that native forest wood waste projects lower greenhouse gas emissions by displacing more carbon-intensive forms of electricity generation. Due to this, the native forestry industry claims it should be able to access RECs as a means of subsidising the activity.

At a superficial level, the argument sounds compelling — surely burning wood is cleaner than burning coal? However, on closer inspection, it is demonstrably false.

To understand why, you have to start with Australia’s emission targets, which cap national emissions. While the cap is in place, nothing that affects emissions within the sectors that count towards the cap should have any influence on the total national or global emissions outcome. All it will achieve is to change the distribution of emissions between sectors, countries and/or time. So, if native forest biomass projects did displace fossil fuel-based electricity generation, as the industry argues it does, it would not lower emissions but simply mean that the emissions would come from another source.

An easy way to think of this is to envisage a magic tub of Neapolitan ice-cream that is always full, where you can change the proportions of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. You can have more chocolate but it means having less vanilla or strawberry, or you can have more strawberry but less chocolate or vanilla, and so on. Whatever combination you choose, you’ll always end up with the same amount of ice-cream in the tub. The same goes for emissions under a cap; less emissions from one source means there must be more from another.

On July 1, 2015, when the carbon price becomes a cap-and-trade scheme, this will apply doubly. We will have an emission cap within an emission cap and no amount of abatement effort directed at the electricity sector, or any other “counted” sector, will be able to lower net emissions.

The second hole on the independents’ plan is that allowing forest biomass projects to access to RECs will not increase the amount of renewable electricity generation. This is because the LRET scheme sets a mandatory amount of renewable electricity that must be generated each year. Because of this, the only thing allowing native forest wood waste into the scheme will achieve is to displace other forms of renewable electricity. Rather than having wind, hydro or some other form of renewable electricity, we’ll get native forest biomass. So, contrary to what is so often claimed, burning native forest biomass won’t displace fossil fuel-based electricity generation and won’t increase renewable generation.

Substituting native forest biomass for another renewable generation source is particularly problematic because of the nature of the technology. The stated purpose of the LRET is to lower the cost of low-emissions technology and, thereby, reduce the long-term cost of cutting greenhouse emissions. Cutting emissions is primarily the job of the carbon pricing scheme and other regulatory mechanisms. Renewable energy support schemes, such as the LRET, are supposed to complement the carbon pricing scheme by driving down the cost of alternative technologies more rapidly than would otherwise occur.

In the case of biomass burning, this is already a mature technology. It has been around for eons and the cost reduction benefits society will reap from allowing native forest biomass projects it to access RECs are likely to be negligible. This is not the same for many other types of renewables, which are immature and have a considerable way to go before they reach their potential. By pushing these other technologies aside, native forest biomass projects will undermine the very purpose of the LRET.

The damage done by including native forest biomass in the LRET may not end there. By increasing the profits from native forestry operations, the independents’ scheme could increase native forest harvesting. If Australia’s greenhouse accounting rules remain as they are, and forestry management is excluded from the national target, the impact of the increase in harvesting will be to increase global greenhouse emissions. If Australia amends its rules and counts forest management towards its emissions target, the increase in harvesting won’t increase global emissions but it will lead to a reduction in Commonwealth revenues from the carbon pricing scheme. Due to this, the Australian taxpayer could end up paying twice for these projects: once through the LRET scheme and again as a result of the lost scheme revenues.

To sum up, the plan can’t lower emissions but could increase them, it will displace other forms of renewable energy and sabotage the operation of the LRET scheme, and it could cost millions. For bad policy, it is hard to beat.

*Andrew Macintosh is the associate director of the ANU Centre for Climate Law & Policy

My understanding is that these projects will be creating energy out of waste wood that would otherwise be burned in the open air anyway. If this is the case, as it is for a planned biomass plant in our part of SW WA, then there is a saving in carbon emissions; one fire instead of two. In addition, it is understood that the forest fuel will be replaced by regrowth whereas the fossil fuel will not.

There are definitely environmental issues to do with using any material from native forests.

However, the major points of the article are completely wrong. The fact that a capped system means that any savings in one form will offset non-savings in other forms is not, in itself, an argument that a particular form of renewable energy (in this case using forestry waste to fuel biomass power generation) is not a “saving”. The same argument applies to wind, solar, tidal, all renewable energy generation.

If it is a renewable energy source (and it is), then why should it be treated any differently (setting aside the incredibly convoluted issue of land use accounting in carbon credit schemes, which is a separate problem entirely)?

I’m not, personally, a great fan of a native forest biomass generator proposal due to the fact I think the management of collection of “waste” is a very sensitive environmental issue, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a discussion about it, and it doesn’t mean that biomass doesn’t deserve to be treated as a potential renewable energy resource.

To sum up, the plan can’t lower emissions but could increase them

To sum up, Andrew Macintosh doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about.

Good article. Adding more uncertainty to an already ineffective scheme is sure to render it completely useless.

Sucks for all the real renewable energy projects wind/solar/geothermal/wave waiting on the sidelines until the LREC certificates are valuable enough.

So as of 2012 we will be chopping down native trees to burn them for renewable energy and growing them again for Carbon offsets… But we will have just displaced renewables with burnt biomass and replaced big trees in native forests with little trees in sparse plantations.

Rupert/Modus – waayyy back in ancient history, the use of “forest waste” was the original justification for wood chipping. Very quickly that tail began to wag the dog.
I actually heard some dingbat from the Tas forest rapists recently demanding that the Feds help find new markets for the almost dead woodchip export industry.
It might have been a nightmare but no rent seeking would be too stoopid these daze.

The proposed regulation reversal from Oakeshott only acts to incentivize the destruction of native forests, and ruins the integrity of the renewable energy target to do it. This is the distortion of democracy that money and influence can have in our nations politics.

The argument that these projects are using waste wood, and will be burnt anyway is a moot point, the fact is that the harvesting projects will already have factored the earnings from LGCs into the viability of their projects (hence why they would have lobbied Oakeshott so strongly)

There is likely to be a real difference, in climate terms, from biomass burning compared to burning coal. Biomass is typically less than a couple of hundred years old and is sourced from above ground and in the upper layers of soil. This region has been roughly in balance with the atmosphere over the past several hundred thousand years. It took many many millions of years to convert CO2 to oil and coal. Burning fossil fuels unquestionably adds CO2 to the atmosphere and ocean (in fact, fossil fuel combustion on its own more than accounts for the measured change in atmospheric CO2, I believe). I suspect burning biomass accelerates the cycle of CO2->plant matter->combustion-> CO2 and can, if executed correctly, contribute less net CO2 per unit energy produced. Obviously, you can’t burn it faster than it grows.

That said, burning native forests is a really bad idea in my view. There are far more appropriate forms of biomass and we owe it to our native fauna and our descendants to try to preserve what little of it is left. And we must consider all the other aspects of air pollution that come from combustion before we commit to that direction.

“Imagine a climate policy plan that was incapable of lowering emissions but could increase them, that resulted in no net gain in the amount of renewable electricity generation, and that cost Australian taxpayers millions each year.”

That’s precisely what we have with the current crop of failed/premature renewable technologies.

Many billions have already been spent- for a tiny dribble of unreliable power. No measureable effect on emissions at all.

Wind is a farce, domestic solar a middle-class rort, geothermal a billion dollars for absolute zero in the least prospective geothermal continent.

This is crazy. Burning stuff (including wood) produces nasty, unintended by-products. Anyone for a dollop of dioxin on their sausage?

Sheesh next they’ll be pushing to burn poultry litter as a “renewable” source of energy so the heinous battery hen industry can profit from the mountains of hazardous waste they produce on their vile factory farms:

Nearly forgot- ABC’s 7.30 program reminded me tonight: the global fiasco of Carbon Capture and Storage. CCS started with the usual hype…a few years later the ‘flagship’ programs are abandoned or stuck at the back of the fridge.

Point is that mainstream media is now reporting critically (if belatedly) on the claims of ‘renewable energy’ and related technologies. Can’t just blame the Murdoch Mafia any more.

Remember the 2010 election- the ALP trumpeted “flagship solar” at Moree? It lost its $300 govt. grant because it couldn’t sell its miniscule 150 MW of power…the bigger one at Chinchilla has until 30 June to find a customer, or it will lose its grant also. The Govt. no doubt secretly hopes it will fail- because they need the capital for other purposes and most of them realise that climate millenarianism is now a vote loser, not a vote winner.

AR: I was never a Trot. They labelled me a Meliorist. They were right for once.

And there are many Green voters like me- they realise the damage done by climate hysteria to environmentalism. Just read Crikey’s “Rooted” blog, for over a year there was not a mention of any topic other than climate change: the virus is still dominant there, but gradually real environmental topics are getting a mention.

No wonder rednecks are so hormonal out here in the bush…they know the Right is poised to take power. Cattle in the national parks, expansion of logging in Victoria and Tasmania…reactionary thugs are already on the move.

I’ve lost faith in Windsor and Oakeshott. Obviously the money has got to them too. What else could motivate them to push for native forest biomass burning as an acceptable course to follow if we’re trying to be serious about mitigating GHG emissions (which the present scheme approved by parliament is not)?

For the science on forestry, wood products,biofuels and mitigation look-up Bruce Lippke’s carbon articles which explain flows of carbon in the forestry cycle and why good forest management and efficient utilisation of wood products are part of the climate solution whether it is plantations or native forests.

I work in Rob’s electorate in the forest industry like hundreds of others. Our industry is closely regulated and has already been down-sized to create a large national park estate. We mostly produce high-quality timber used in flooring that is grown and manafuctured locally. The alternative timber in Indonesian hardwood or concrete and steel. We create a lot of waste (tree heads and unsaleable parts of trees) and would love to see this used productively rather than burn it in the forest like we currently do. It won’t change our forest management much but it will increase its efficiency in mitigating carbon emissions.

I was actually describing a very different native forest situation where I work and we are miles away from a situation where there is a risk of depleting nutrients but are at high-risk of escaped burns due to high post-logging fuel loads. Hence the desire to utilise a proportion of that residue productively.

We manage euc plantations as well, but again don’t have access to markets on the north coast like other plantation managers around the country that can sell pulp to a very small-end diameter and then to biofuel markets. Unfortunately we are still reliant on windrow burning prior to second rotation. Establishment of biofuel opportunities on the north coast is reliant on both native forests and plantation due to the relatively small scale of the plantation estate and haulage distance.

We are not bad people you know and actually have a clue about what we are doing…

If this whole burning of forest residue idea were simply there to use up material that would otherwise just go to waste then it might be okay. Might I said, only might.

But, as Justin indicated this so-called waste might be better left to rot and so benefit the soil and air.

Also if this forest residue had some value as a raw material for biofuels or whatever then why is it not so used already? No, I think this idea is simply an attempt by foresters to cash in on a price for carbon and by the skeptics/deniers to distract from the real pressing need to be serious about tackling climate change.

It will also provide a perverse incentive to increase forest waste too which is obviously not a good thing.